Happy New Year! Welcome to 2025!

In this first episode of 2025, Elizabeth is speaking with Kourtney Hake and Paige Timmerman about their recent book, Their Stories, Their Voices, which focuses on narrative writing and how to easily implement narrative writing units into your instruction.

Paige and Kourtney discuss how they define narrative writing and talk about how they structured this book. They really worked to make it possible to implement narrative writing as seamless as possible and without extra work. They give lots of examples from their own teaching and have excellent mentor texts for narrative writing. One of my favorite parts of our conversation is the discussion about how we as teachers can work with students to include their voices in all genres of writing - not only narratives.

For more ideas, check out Kourtney and Paige's book. You can find it here: https://www.solutiontree.com/their-stories-their-voices.html. It is a great resource to support your writing instruction in the new year!

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Happy Holidays! It's the holiday edition of The Literacy Teacher's Podcast.

In the spirit of the season of reflection, this week's episode is dedicated to taking the time to think about your teaching in 2024 - what went well and also what changes you want to make in 2025.

Elizabeth focused on the following areas of her teaching this year:

- Planning

- Students

- Instruction/Teaching

- Materials for Students

- Tools When Planning

Take some time to consider your own teaching and what small tweaks you can make in the new year.

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Should kids have independent reading time in school?

In order for kids to become stronger and more engaged readers, they need time to read. But, that time needs to be intentional. We don't want kids spending independent reading time staring out the windows or re-reading the same page over and over to pass the time and check the work off the list.

In this episode, I share five tips to make independent reading time more intentional and effective. The great news - all of these can be implemented with a few tweaks rather than spending hours trying to make it work.

Before ending, I share my book project for the rest of the year and January.

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How can we effectively teach literacy to students? In this episode, Norene Bunt speaks about her recent book, Solving the Literacy Puzzle, and how effective literacy instruction can be implemented. Some of the topics discussed include:

- Effective literacy instruction

- Components of literacy instruction at the elementary level

- Comprehension and how to ensure that it is a focus of reading instruction

You can check out Norene's book at: https://www.solutiontree.com/solving-the-literacy-puzzle.html

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This week's episode focuses on reading comprehension and how to include it into reading instruction. The following is addressed:

- Why we read

- How to assess reading comprehension

- How to include a structured approach to comprehension into reading instruction

The episode ends with ideas for how parents can address comprehension when reading with kids at home.

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What other ways can you read with students other than through interactive read-alouds?

This week's episode is all about shared reading and how to include this into your teaching to support students' reading fluency and comprehension.

Elizabeth begins by explaining shared reading and what it looks like in practice. She talks about the types of texts that are commonly used in shared reading and how they are different from the texts used in interactive read-alouds. Shared reading supports a variety of skills - which are addressed.

Finally, Elizabeth ends with how shared reading can be beneficial to parents when they are reading at home with their kids.

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What is a literacy coach? How does a literacy coach support teachers, students, and schools? In today's episode, Elizabeth is speaking with Melissa Morrison, the founder of Teaching to Transform. Melissa is a coach, specifically a writing coach. She works with teachers to support their writing instruction.

In this episode, Elizabeth and Melissa discuss the role of a coach and how coaching can benefit teachers and students. They also discuss writing instruction and her advice for supporting writing at school and at home.

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It's October! Today's episode is not directly related to literacy. Elizabeth sits down to speak with Dara Kurtz, an author, speaker, and breast cancer survivor. Dara has experienced setbacks in her life, but has come out stronger and is living a more intentional life. She teaches a class that focuses on helping individuals thrive after and/or during a challenging time in life. We talk about strategies to help if you are feeling overwhelmed, burned out, or just need a reset. And...good news, most of these are free!

For more information about Dara:

DARA KURTZ, after being diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of forty-two, left her twenty-year career as a financial advisor to focus on writing and speaking. Today her personal blog, Crazy Perfect Life, reaches over 200,000 followers. Dara is the author of I am My Mother’s Daughter: Wisdom on Life, Loss, and Love, Crush Cancer, and Living with Gratitude, her daily gratitude journal.

Dara’s been a guest on over 70 podcasts/TV/Radio shows. Her goal is to use her life experiences to help people strengthen their relationships and create more happiness and joy in their everyday lives.

Follow Dara:

Sign up for Dara’s Newsletter https://crazyperfectlife.com/join/

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/crazyperflife/

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/crazyperfectlife

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Literacy education has many terms that sound similar and have similar meanings. Phonological and phonemic awareness are two of those terms!

This week, Elizabeth explains these two terms and shares examples of how they can be taught. Foundational skills are a hot topic at the moment and curriculum is being implemented to address phonological and phonemic awareness - so having an understanding of what they mean and what instruction needs to be taught is helpful for supporting elementary students.

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Welcome to the new school year! This episode starts with an update. Then, Elizabeth shares what she is focusing on for this back to school time. This fall, Elizabeth is teaching three reading classes - so she discusses how teachers can think through their reading instruction and emphasizes interactive read-alouds and what to pay attention to when planning and implementing read-alouds at the beginning of the year. The episode ends with three books that Elizabeth read with her kids over the summer.

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